Tile as Muse: Atomic Sound Club & Hotel HiLo
In Louisville’s Highlands neighborhood, where neon lights, vintage signage, and eclectic energy define the streetscape, two projects stand out for their bold design language: Atomic Sound Club Gameyard and Hotel HiLo.These spaces aren’t just destinations, they’re experiences. Both embrace pattern, color, and nostalgia to transport visitors into immersive worlds that feel simultaneously retro and futuristic. At the core of both projects lies the same creative spark: a design story crafted by Natalie O. around tile.
The Design Story: When Tile Leads the Way
For both projects, the design didn’t start with a mood board or a palette; it began with a piece of our tile.
For Atomic Sound Club, the journey began with Haustile’s Wild tile, a tiger-inspired pattern that immediately struck the design team as the perfect visual and conceptual anchor. The artist behind this tile, Real Fun, Wow!, states, “The artwork speaks to the space between imagination and reality,” which mirrors the atmosphere NOD wanted to create: a surreal, sensory environment where pattern and sound collide.
Wild became the project’s heartbeat, layered against our Deep Lines and Circles tile that introduced rhythm. The pairing produced the club’s iconic restrooms, immersive, black-and-white optical illusions punctuated by flashes of color and texture that feel alive under the mood-lighting and pulsing soundtrack.
When Atomic wrapped, its owner approached NOD to design Hotel HiLo, a boutique hotel on the same property. Sydney Alvey, the lead designer on both Hotel HiLo and Atomic, states, “While the hotel plays off the club, they have different identities, think more cousins than sisters.” This time, the brief called for something even bolder: a maximalist, nostalgia-fueled environment that felt as if the design trends of the '50s and late 90s had a baby.
Once again, tile took the lead. The team selected Gossip for high-contrast beverage stations and paired it with Tangled and Gradient Stripes to introduce curves, layers, and pops of retro patterns. The result? A perfect collision of eras: mid-century motel charm meets Y2K pop culture energy.
The Designer Behind the Vision
At the center of these projects is Sydney Alvey, an interior designer at NOD, a Louisville-based design firm known for its bold and collaborative approach.
Sydney’s passion for interiors sparked long before her professional training and has since evolved into a career defined by curiosity, experimentation, and a love of storytelling through materials.
“I’ve been obsessed with design since I was seven,” she laughs. “I’d trade cartoons for HGTV and spend hours convincing my mom to let me redecorate our house. Years later, I got to renovate that same home as an adult, which felt like such a full-circle moment.”
Her design aesthetic today blends 70s influences with modern eclecticism, a mix of color, texture, and personality, but shifts from project to project, as “design is not one size fits all.” More than anything, Sydney’s approach is material-driven, where one sample can become the soul of a space.
“Tile is a personal favorite place to start for inspiration, as there are no limits as to how it can be utilized, and the colors, textures, patterns, and shape possibilities are endless,” she explains. “For Atomic and HiLo, Haustile’s tiles didn’t just complement the design, they defined it.”
Nostalgia, Boldness, and the Art of Play
For Hotel HiLo, Sydney drew heavily from her 90s and early 2000s upbringing — channeling everything from MTV Cribs and Lizzie McGuire to The Cheetah Girls and Bratz. The goal was to create a space that felt like stepping into a dream sequence from a music video or sleepover movie montage with saturated colors, chrome accents, and all.
“As an adult in the world we live in today, I often yearn for certain aspects of my childhood, when things felt simpler. This was an opportunity to create a reprieve destination spot for nostalgia. For my fellow Zillenials, the hotel is a vibrant, loud, personality-filled, throwback of a space for your inner child to come alive and live it up. For everyone else: it's a fun place where aesthetics are served, providing a unique hotel experience unlike any other.”
Pro tip: Start your night at Atomic Sound Club, then wander over to Hotel HiLo for a stay that feels like a cinematic rewind to your favorite 2000s daydream.
